Case study 09 · Concept · Identity · Brand systems · Art direction
A logo is the easy part.
Thirteen marks, one hand — a gallery, a radio station, a cookbook, a renewable-energy firm, a media studio, two software products and my own two businesses.
Anyone can draw a mark. The work is deciding what it has to survive: a favicon and a trade-show banner, a black background and a white one, a client who will set it in whatever they have on hand. A mark that only works at the size you drew it is a picture, not an identity.
The range on this sheet is the argument. Armet and Ablogorithm are machined and cinematic; Motta is five circles and a joke about the name; Secoes has to read as clean energy without a leaf cliché; 6zero2 is a phone code drawn as a number. Same hand, and you would not guess it.
Two of these are the shops the rest were made in. Lenticulus and
CTWPHOTO CREATIVE are my own, and most of this sheet was taken under one or the
other. Three went out through somebody else's agency instead — I freelanced into
Motta + Morris in Phoenix, and Secoes, My Allergy Free Cookbook and
XL index were their accounts. Their clients; I drew the marks.
look at XL indexIt is on the sheet twice. That is not a
duplicate.
Why it is on there twice
Every mark went out on the same sheet — the drawing centered, the palette declared underneath as swatches rather than described in a sentence, and a version number in the corner. Naming the palette on the page is what turns a picture into a proposal: the client is not approving a drawing, they are approving a drawing and the two colors it commits them to.
XL index went out twice, and both survived. Same letterforms, same lockup, two palettes — and the identity sheet above carries both, because the client had a use for each.
One of them is still on the building
On The Edge went up at the gallery's first location — the exterior sign, the print, the website. It is still on the building, over the door in Old Town Scottsdale, laser cut out of rustic steel. That is not a material you commission for something you expect to change.
It is not the version I wanted. I drew it stacked — ON THE over EDGE, which is how it sits on the sheet above. The gallery's committee took the horizontal lockup instead, and that is the one they cut into steel.
Which is the ordinary condition of the work. You draw both, you argue for one, and the client picks. Their choice is the one that has been outdoors ever since — and a mark outliving its brief is the only review that counts. Nobody kept it because I asked them to.
And I showed there. My photography was juried in, and hung for a year — so the mark was on the door of a room my own work was in. That is the closest thing to a reference a designer gets: the client kept working with the person, not just the drawing.
My role — concept, identity design, palette and presentation.
Taken under — my own two shops, CTWPHOTO CREATIVE and
Lenticulus.
Three on freelance — Secoes, My Allergy Free Cookbook and
XL index came in as freelance work for Motta + Morris, a Phoenix agency.
Their accounts, their client relationships; I drew the marks. An agency bringing in an
outside hand for its own client's identity is a different kind of hire than winning the
client yourself.
The sheet — my own, built in InDesign with spot colors specified. Reproduced here
converted to sRGB.